How Does Photosynthesis Relate to Solar Panel Technology?

Photosynthesis is the way that organisms capture energy from sunlight and translate it into potential work energy, and solar panels work on the similar theory that sunlight can excite electrons to create energy. Discover how humans mimic photosynthesis with help from a science teacher and field biologist in this free video on biology.

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Video Transcript

Hi I'm Brian with EricksonTutoring.blogspot.com. And today we're going to discuss how photosynthesis relates to solar panel technology. So photosynthesis is the sort of biological way that organisms capture the energy from sunlight and translate it into potential work energy. So basically what happens is a plant absorbs the sunlight, it excites electrons, they pass it down a chain and eventually convert that into sugars which get turned into ATP. So that's what photosynthesis is. Solar panels sort of do a similar thing. They're also looking to capture the energy from sunlight and the energy is going to be used to do work. And they even capture it in kind of a similar way. So solar panels also work on the theory that sunlight can excite electrons so electrons get excited, they're passed down a chain until they reach reactive centers as well through a series of reactions, similar things occur and humans can use the energy to do work that we desire. So there are parallels that can be drawn between photosynthesis and solar panel technology. In some ways you can say that humans are trying to mimic photosynthesis and use it to their own benefit. So this has been a brief discussion on how photosynthesis and solar panel technology are related.